Eric Holder was the king of extortion from big companies. He had it all figured out and was able to redistribute money from these “settlements” to the favorite radical group of the day. That this went on at our Justice Department is the height of hypocrisy.

The Justice Department announced Wednesday it will no longer allow prosecutors to strike settlement agreements with big companies directing them to make payouts to outside groups, ending an Obama-era practice that Republicans decried as a “slush fund” that padded the accounts of liberal interest groups.

In a memo sent to 94 U.S. attorneys’ offices early Wednesday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he would end the practice that allowed companies to meet settlement burdens by giving money to groups that were neither victims nor parties to the case.

Sessions said the money should, instead, go to the Treasury Department or victims.

“When the federal government settles a case against a corporate wrongdoer, any settlement funds should go first to the victims and then to the American people—not to bankroll third-party special interest groups or the political friends of whoever is in power,” Sessions said in a statement.

“This bill is oversight and action. Congress must not tolerate Justice Department political appointees using settlements to funnel money to their liberal friends,” Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., who introduced the bill, said in a statement.

HERE’S OUR PAST REPORT ON THIS “SLUSH FUND”:

If you needed one more reason to think our government is like the Mafia…

A slush fund scheme via the Department of Justice funneled billions of dollars to liberal activist organizations. The Department of Justice is the last place this should have happened but under Obama our government was turned into a radical fundraising apparatus for progressives. This has Eric Holder and Barack Obama’s fingerprints all over it!

“Advocates for big government and progressive power are using the Justice Department to extort money from corporations. It’s a shakedown. It’s corrupt, pure and simple.” – Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch

Here’s how it works: Remember when big banks were sued by the feds for supposed mortgage abuse or discrimination? The government basically extorted money from the banks and then incentivized the banks to settle by giving the money to third-party organizations. How convenient, right? It was a way to redistribute billions to radical organizations like La Raza!

So far, investigators have accounted for $3 billion paid to “non-victim entities”.

“The underlying problem with the slush funds is we don’t know exactly where the money is going. Using enforcement authority to go after corporate defendants, DOJ bureaucrats are taking billions away from taxpayers to fund their pet projects overriding congressional preferences.” – Ted Frank, director of The Competitive Enterprise Institute Center for Class Action Fairness.